Burial & Four Tet - "Moth/Wolf Cub"

Moth/Wolf Cub

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A. Moth (9:02)
B. Wolf Cub (8:55)

A new release from Burial and Four Tet, completely shrouded in secrecy and mystery. A not uncommon move from Dubstep & UK Garage's beloved William Bevan. This one is huge! Two unreal tunes, each taking the characteristic sound from Four Tet (Moth) and Burial (Wolf Cub) but with a twist. Of course, the Four Tet track again defeats ideas of Folktronica to persue more House based 4/4 brilliance but this time with a hint of Burial's trademark sound, while Wolf Cub is a showcasing of the best of Bevan's ability with the added technicality and production that Kerian Hebden was on hand to offer. This is even beautifully packaged as a coverless 12" with nothing but black on black.

This easily stacks up as one of the best of the year so far.

10/10

MONO - "Hymn To The Immortal Wind"

Hymn To The Immortal Wind

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1. Ashes In The Snow (11:46)
2. Burial At Sea (10:39)
3. Silent Flight, Sleeping Dawn (6:00)
4. Pure As Snow (Trails of the Winter Storm) (11:26)
5. Follow The Map (3:56)
6. The Battle To Heaven (12:51)
7. Everlasting Light (10:23)



Picking up from 2006's You Are There, Japan's MONO have returned triumphantly with their most massive sounding record to date. This time upping the ante by enlisting the help of the largest chamber orchestra they've used, what we get here is nothing short of magical. Here the songs seem to flow much more seamlessly than their previous album, merging somber tones of reverberated tremolo guitar into gargantuan walls of noise without a sense of it all being disjointed and without it tiring too easily. They've at last found a point in which to quit a theme and transform it into something bigger and better. The music is a lot more focused and it drives much smoother. And with that being said, you can still expect the typical MONO brand of Post-Rock, of course mixed and mastered by musical mastermind and production genius Steve Albini. The only thing that's lacking, again, is the fact that capturing the intensity of their live performance is nigh on impossible and while their latest opus is packed with the cacophonous grandeur you'd expect, it isn't quite a patch on seeing them in the flesh.



8.1/10

Ducktails - "Acres Of Shade"

Acres Of Shade

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A. White House With Green Shutters (10:00)
B. Surfs Up (10:15)


Matt Mondanile returns with a brand new tape, leaving behind his previous style of lo-fi bedroom psych-pop. With this release, he's opted for swirling synths and baked out psych-drones, swaying in and out of tune and time, lulling the listener into a great, deep slumber-esque trance. This is definitely something for nighttimes.



7.6/10



Information on release: Cassette released by ARBOR. Limited to 100 C20 tapes with full colour covers and printed labels.

Windy And Carl & Heavy Winged - "Monolith: Earth"

Monolith: Earth

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1. Windy And Carl - Intelligence In Evoluation (29:00)
2. Heavy Winged - Wool And Water (23:04)
3. Windy And Carl & Heavy Winged - Monolith: Earth (23:45)

"The Monolith series combines two artists on the same one-sided, reverse-cut LP by hard-panning one recording to the right and the other recording to the left. By adjusting the panning controls on his or her turntable, the listener is free to control the degree to which the two recordings melt into one."


What a wonderful, wonderful concept! A single sided picture disc LP showcasing two great bands in collaboration but with a peach of a twist: you get to select the extent of each recording when playing back the entire mix. To put it simply, Windy & Carl are the left speaker, Heavy Winged take the right speaker. You go left, you get all of Windy & Carl. If you go right... well, I won't insult your intelligence.

With the fannying about and playing aside, what does the music really have to offer? You often wonder when it comes to something physically conceptual if the music will ever live up to the hype. In this case, being the great fan of Ambient and Drone that I am, I'm left feeling at least fulfilled. And while it isn't the most satisfyingly brilliant record, it does have it's pros. For starters, the entire Windy & Carl track alone is breathtaking. Reminiscent of one William Basinski, the track bleeds seamlessly from start to finish in a beautiful array of sounds and noises only building to a Drone to the close of the almost half an hour effort.

And again, on it's own, the Heavy Winged track is good. It's abrasive and iratic. It's what you'd expect from a Noise Rock song. The sad thing is that combined, with both tracks panned perfectly left and right, as the collaboration was intended, I'm not so sure. They do add to one another but there's a total lack of a sense of completion within the music. It seems a little bit of a mismatched effort and while I understand that Ambient over Ambient or Noise over Noise would be completely conterproductive, I think that it could have been much, much better.


6.3/10

The Appleseed Cast - "Sagarmatha"

Sagarmatha

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1. As The Little Things Go (8:15)
2. A Bright Light (7:05)
3. The Road West (8:08)
4. The Summer Before (3:09)
5. One Reminder, An Empty Room (1:49)
6. Raise the Sails (6:27)
7. Like a Locus (Shake Hands with the Dead) (4:02)
8. South Col (6:27)
9. An Army of Fireflies (4:28)

The Appleseed Cast return with their sixth studio album and their first since 2006's "Peregrine". While most of the album remains instrumental, beautifully cascading melody through tremolo guitar and consistent, constant soft tipper tapper percussion not uncommon to the new wave of Post-Rock artists (Explosions In The Sky, Caspian, This Will Destroy You), we also see the clear nods to their Emo routes as well where vocals and conventional song structures are present. Sadly, the vocals are almost scarcely used throughout the entire album. There's also room for the odd climatic eruption resulting in large sounding driven moments but I can't help but feel we've been here before. While it is a good record, it isn't by any means inspirational nor unique. It suffers often of sounding "samey" not from songs within the album but from all of the bands that had done this 5 years previous.

What I can say is that it is a good showcase of well written modern Instrumental Rock that will appeal to most fans of Emo and Post-Rock.



6.7/10

Grouper/City Center - "Split 7" "

Split 7"

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A. Grouper - False Horizon (4:22)
B. City Center - This Is How We See In The Dark (3:46)

Two new tracks featured here from both Grouper and City Center. On side A we have a Liz Harris continuing everything that was wonderful about Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill: haunting vocals, this time layered to greater effect, strumming, reverberated acoustic guitars and sweet, if not awfully morose, melodies. As I've said before, Grouper goes from strength to strength with every release and False Horizon is no exception.

With side B comes a refreshingly dense, dreamy number thick full of distant, beautiful vocals and lovely, reassuring nursery rhyme-esque instrumentation. It's lullaby-ish qualities are a welcome change from the often upsetting nature of Grouper's music. Jingling bells and papery percussion accompany swirling noises of somnambulant rhythm. I love this. I really, really do.

8.4/10



NB I'll be working on contacting City Center to aquire more of their music because it is simply stunning.

Æthenor - "Faking Gold And Murder"

Faking Gold And Murder

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1. I (10:34)
2. II (9:51)
3. III (10:17)
4. IV (5:07)

Avant-Metal trio Stephen O'Malley ( Sunn O))) ), Daniel O’Sullivan ( Guapo ) and Vincent de Roguin ( Shora ) return with their 3rd dose of mindblowing sounds but this time they're joined by legend David Tibet of Current 93, percussionists Nicolas Field and Alex Babel, and guitarist Alexander Tucker. This is arguably Æthenor best release yet. One thing for certain is that this is definitely their heaviest offering. Drawing influence from a myriad of genres, sometimes blistering with the free-jazz style drumming of Babel and Fields then meandering into long, low-end passages of bass, drones, waves and washes of electronics, Rhodes and guitar. The only sense to be seen throughout the whole record is the almost insane chanting vocals of Tibet, sometimes closer to spoken word than song. This is one hell of a weird take on Metal.

"Brooding, primeval, dark, alchemical epics are full of a ferocious intensity, sounding more like a starlit night being ripped open by lightning than a musical group. Intelligent and primal, like a daemonic workshop, battering up Pandemoniums and dreaming of gold and murder, Æthenor are spectacular." -David Tibet

7.1/10

Pocahaunted - "Gold Miner's Daughters"

Gold Miner's Daughters

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(A)1. Hideous (5:40)
(A)2. Sun (8:30)
(B)1. Demon (13:30)

It wouldn't be right to bury the first month of the new year without knowing we've seen a release from California's self-confessed "Olsen twins of blissed out drone”. Just over two years on from the absolutely astonishing debut tape Moccasinging, we're presented with their 26th release and it's quite simply stunning. The three tracks of wonderfully psychedelic drones act as a great canvas for the soaring tribal-esque vocal styles and the quiant stringed instruments being scarcely yet lovingly bowed. Coupling this to great effect comes the occasional percussive hit or tap or rattle accompanied by jangling guitars. And while this might, on paper, come across as something horrible or even nightmarish, I can only assure you that this is nothing short of magical. It's the score to a beautiful rainbow-laden dream of distant, far off places and times.

Two new tracks are features on the A side, while side B has a 15 minute live recording. The only downside to a tape release, of course, is the lack of storage to utilize on such a medium. And while it's a pretty addition to any collectors stack, pile, shelf or cabinet, the music itself only clocks in at a little over 26 minutes, and it leaves you wanting.



7.9/10



Information on release: Cassette released by ExBx Tapes. Limited to 200 C30 tapes.

Alva Noto - "Xerrox Vol.2"

Xerrox Vol.2

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1. Xerrox Phaser Acat 1 (12:11)
2. Xerrox Rin (0:51)
3. Xerrox Soma (7:11)
4. Xerrox Meta Phaser (6:23)
5. Xerrox Sora (6:54
6. Xerrox Monophaser 1 (8:04)
7. Xerrox Monophaser 2 (5:31)
8. Xerrox Teion (2:03)
9. Xerrox Teion Acat (5:26)
10. Xerrox Tek Part 1 (5:28)
11. Xerrox Monophaser 3 (6:14)

Finding the words to describe volume 2 in Carsten Nicolai's Xerrox series isn't easy. What we have is a dense and rich atmosphere of vibrant sounds and dreamy drones that flow and merge seamlessly into one majestic opus. While the intention was to hark back to the idealism of film score, employing a linear aesthetic to the music, you can't help but feel that there's something much greater here. The theme itself would require the use of other means of sensory stimualation, but I feel Alva Noto has done more in this collection of sounds than what any picture or word could possibly add to or expand on. Using samples and collaborations from his recent tour of the USA, we find weathered borrowings from Stephen O'Malley and Michael Nyman as well as rehashings of Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto's encore from 2004's "Insen" tour. This is an out and out masterpiece. A true work of great art.

9.3/10

Emeralds - "What Happened"

What Happened

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1. Alive In The Sea Of Information (8:02)
2. Damaged Kids (15:01)
3. Up In The Air (4:02)
4. Living Room (16:43)
5. Disappearing Ink (13:32)

It's difficult to place Emeralds. At their core, musically, what you get is vast and expansive synth drones. While there's still hints of Noise and of Ambient, it'd be wrong to say Emeralds are one or the other. What I can say, however, is that whatever they're doing works and it's nothing short of magical. The Ohio trio produce some of the most touching and brilliant soundscapes, coupling great walls of synth and noise with Mark McGuire's twinkling guitar leads and flashes of feedback. It's unfair to say this early on in the year that I've picked my top album for 2009 but I honestly can't help myself. This is what experimental music is all about.

9.1/10